Sony did a good job with a "justaphone" they recently released, the Naite.I bought one a few months ago for around $120. No contracts, basic phone, no sliding, good screen, some free games that are good, bluetooth, a decent camera, small form factor, and really good battery life. It even accepts standard microSD cards, if you need it.

The free Sony management software is really pretty good, too. It offers phone backups, you can send/receive text messages through your machine while it's plugged in, and it didn't come with a lot of BS carrier lock-in stuff.

The funny thing is, for a phone that is "justaphone", why does it need bluetooth, a camera, games, a microSD slot, and management software on the computer?

However they don't explain why we should believe that current dealers would be willing to start collecting and submitting taxes to the government. They already have a product that they are selling tax-free, what is the incentive for the dealers to start charging more for the same product?

You just assume dealers would still be selling it on the street. Do you see any alcohol dealers on the street? Any tobacco dealers trying to get you to buy a smoke? When something is legalized it gets controlled by the FDA for purity and sold in stores. Excessive profits are taken out by competition and dealers either get unemployed or find a job somewhere else. Learn some basic economics, FFS.

I don't mind people smoking pot but do not want my children to buy a pack on the streets.

You do realize that because it is illegal, your children are much more likely to be able to buy it on the streets right now? Dealers don't have age limits. If it was taxed and controlled your kids wouldn't be able to buy it unless they showed up at a state liquor store with ID showing they are 21. Right now they can probably get it at school if they wanted to.

Wake up - do you really think after legalization dealers are going to be roaming the streets convincing your kids to buy a pack of smokes? The biggest risk you're going to face is them going over to their friends house while their parents aren't home and getting into "daddy's stash." Kids have been doing this for years with alcohol, which is far more toxic and dangerous than cannabis, and actually can cause poisoning. The worst thing that can happen on cannabis is some kid gets the munchies and eats too much food.

BTW one of my chief annoyances with the Mac OS is the inability to quickly and easily switch between windows. You have to juggle windows around on the screen. i.e. It's stuck in the pre-95 era. The Windows & Linux tab bars are a very easy solution to that problem.

Surely you've never used Mac OS X in the last 10 years. OS X has had a Dock for the last 10 years that performs the same function as what you call the tab bar. Also, alt-Tab works just fine on OS X.

To make matters even worse, we are definitely hitting 48 cores right now.

Luckily we aren't anywhere near 48 cores and there is some time left to come up with a new Linux (Windows?).

Total BS. I just installed two HP Proliant DL785G6 servers which have a total of 8 AMD 6-core CPUs each, for a total of 48 cores. Coming very soon is the new HP DL970 servers which will have a total of eight Intel 8-core servers, or 64 cores.

Sure enough, they each separately report back that - wow - there seems to be some subversives on campus, so they each get 100 agents undercover. "The place is CRAWLING with subversives!" Next thing you know, "You can't walk 5 feet without seeing someone or something suspicious - people who don't fit in, blah blah blah".All these people who got iPads so they can review them, or they can develop the "next big thing"... and they're going to be obsolete in 3 months because everything we said about them was true.

I reinstalled Dungeons and Dragons Online recently. The installer uses Pando. However, it wasn't very sneaky about it. It was in the install at some point.

The problem is that Turbine, makers of DDO and Lord of the Rings Online, is installing what is essentially the equivalent of adware or spyware without the user's permission. You have to manually uninstall it afterwards, and you are not given a choice whether or not to install it. Would you accept it if a game publisher installed adware toolbars into your browser without your permission?

This automatically puts Turbine on my shit list. I thought they were pretty cool for releasing DDO as a free to play game, but then when I found they installed Pando Media Booster, I uninstalled both Pando and DDO. You don't get to treat your customers like shit and expect us not to uninstall your software and send it to the/dev/null where it belongs.

The iPad is pretty much toddler safe. They can bang away on the screen, touch it and get a response, and play around in apps pretty easily. What's more, it wipes clean pretty easily after they get their drool infested hands all over it. The only thing you need to be careful of is the home screen... They will definitely hold their fingers down and put your icons into "jiggle mode," and if you're not careful they can easily delete apps. Just supervise them while they use it and make sure they don't do anything really crazy, like email your boss or delete an expensive app.

I wish Apple had a "safe mode" where you couldn't delete any apps, move any icons, or change any settings. It would be nice to hand it over to the kids and not worry about them doing anything to it.

No way I'd pay $1 to watch a TV episode once. Don't know about others, but assuming a $1 price point to own a song is more or less legitimate, can't see paying that much for a single viewing of a TV show. I value the vast majority of TV shows less than a single good song, so even $1 to own a TV show episode is pushing it (this may be why the only TV shows I own copies of are Firefly, Flying Circus, and Fawlty Towers).

Basically, the TV shows are either going to be ad supported or cost money. You pick. You can pay $0.99 to rent an ad-free version, or you can go to Hulu where advertisers are paying approximately 20 cents per ad to show you about 5 ad spots during the show.

TV content is not free to produce, but $0.99 is probably the most reasonable price they've had so far.

Now, if they would only add 5.1 surround for HD shows and closed captioning, they'd have a guaranteed hit on their hands.

Now, what I want to know is does the interface give me a custom "shows I like" menu that will show that I have not watched or what is new, or will it be like the crappy current interface where I have to go searching for everything......

The interface Steve showed looked very nice. It has a favorite shows section where you can see icons for each show you like, with a numeric badge similar to the push notification on iOS showing new content for each show. The favorite shows icons can even be rearranged by holding down the select button on one of them for a few seconds, which puts the icons into "jiggle mode" similar to rearranging icons on iOS.

In short, they just made the first set top box interface that doesn't completely suck.

That's because people are idiots and they only want the function of the DVR - being able to time shift their favorite shows. They don't care how it is delivered. The DVR is a hack, meant to record content that is broadcast at a fixed time for later playback.

When people finally have the "universal library in the cloud with all TV shows and Movies ever created" they'll wonder why they even cared about DVRs in the first place.

I am not sure whether/. users appreciate the whole situation in India.Terrorists using blackberry is an actual problem here.

I'm not sure whether/. users appreciate the whole situation in India. Terrorists using human language is an actual problem here. Therefore, we must now eavesdrop on all conversations. Furthermore, whispering is now forbidden, as you might be quiet enough that our microphones can't hear you. Speak loudly and clearly citizen - move along, nothing to see hear.